Twitter blows up over Hillary Clinton’s three words of advice for Donald Trump

Posted: 10/06/2016 15:23

Touché, Hillary Clinton, touché. It seems that the country’s first female Democratic nominee has raised her Twitter game at the expense of her Republican rival, Donald Trump.

Earlier today, Trump, grand master of Twitter tirades, took both Clinton and President Barack Obama to task in his customary, confrontational manner. Trump’s tweet included his penchant for derogatory nicknames, in this case it was his pet name for Clinton “crooked Hillary.” His post implied that Obama only endorsed Clinton because she would continue his policies. The tweet was consequently retweeted 25,000 times, a modest figure for Trump.

Neither the prospective Republican nominee, nor perhaps anyone on Twitter, could have predicted Clinton’s understated, yet unstoppable, response. Utilizing the “delete your account” meme to great effect, she simply offered those three hilarious words of advice — and Twitter lapped it up.

Clinton’s tweet informing Trump to do away with his Twitter profile has now been retweeted a whopping 300,000 times in the span of just six hours. That makes it the most popular tweet of the campaign season thus far, and Clinton’s most popular tweet of all time by a huge margin. At this rate, it could even outdo Obama’s tweet celebrating his re-election in 2012. Although it needs a fair amount of retweets to reach that milestone.

Clinton, however, cannot lay claim to the “delete your account” putdown, which was already a Twitter tradition for anyone who wanted to wryly take someone to task over a particularly embarrassing tweet. Nonetheless, we must give the lady her due, she deployed it with the utmost efficiency — like a poison arrow to the very heart of Trump’s Twitter failings.

Amid the Clinton fanfare — which saw Twitter users do what they do best: Tweet out their own memes and GIFs in response to a viral tweet — Trump clapped back with his own response. He basically said what any impartial onlooker was thinking: Was it really Clinton who thought of that excellent retort?

The fact of the matter is that Clinton’s push to connect with younger voters online has often come across as out of character. Throughout the primary season, the Democrat has roped in her celebrity friends to manage her Instagram accounts, done the dab dance with Ellen, and appeared on (arguably) the most millennial show of all time, Broad City. The rather desperate display has attracted the disdain of even her most ardent supporters, including Obama, who described her attempts at attracting the youth vote as the equivalent of a “relative signing up for Facebook.”